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“Resignation Dogs.” · Pod Save America

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, the war in Afghanistan is almost over
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: after a massive evacuation and a horrifying terrorist attack. Republican
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: politicians use the tragedy as a pretense to call for
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's impeachment. And NYU law professor Melissa Murray talks
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to Lovett about the Supreme Court's decision to block the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: administration's eviction moratorium and Stephen Breyer's latest comments about his
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: possible retirement.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: But first.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Jason Concepcion's brand new cricket podcast has arrived. X-Ray Vision
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is a fan culture show that will dive into your
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: favorite films, TV shows, comics, and more. On the very
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: first episode, Jason gives a recap of the Marvel Cinematic
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Universe Phase 4 with actor Jason Manzoukas and gives his
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: take on the most recent Spider-Man trailer. Subscribe to X-Ray
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Vision on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: your podcasts. That's exciting.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: That is exciting. That Spider-Man trailer really blew up online. Yeah.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: What did you think?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen it yet.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I was on my, I was really detoxing.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Good for you. From tech.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's a real.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I really was.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It's a real break.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: For you.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I just came into my Twitter to retweet our pods.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: That's the world. That's what I can do.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: It's all about.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: You're like, oh, this app that makes me sad all
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: the time. Maybe I'll avoid it. I deleted it.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I deleted it.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: For two weeks.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Still can get to it on the browser though. Shifty fuckers.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: You know what? That's something. That's progress. Also, if you
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: live in California, listen up. Today, August 30th, is the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: last day to register to vote for the recall election.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: If you're already registered, check your mail for your ballot,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: fill it out, and return it by September 14th. Make
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: sure you vote no on question one to stop a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: right-wing lunatic from taking over California. This is not a drill.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Its stake is not only control of this state, but
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: potentially control of the United States Senate, since we have
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: an 88-year-old senior senator. So it doesn't matter whether or
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: not you like Gavin Newsom. Just vote no.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: You just have to vote now.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Visit votesaveamerica.com slash California to learn more. And please note
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: what I just said was not authorized by a candidate
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: or a committee controlled by any candidate. Particularly one controlled
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: by Dianne Feinstein.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think Dianne Feinstein and Gavin Newsom love
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: the part where you say, you know, we don't care
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: if you like him. And she's 100 years old.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not authorized. Not authorized.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Resign, Senator, please. Larry Elder abuse.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm working on a whole bunch of stuff.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: We're workshopping today. I have one offline that you guys
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: can't hear.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It's something.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: One more note before we begin. Our next episode of
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America won't be until Thursday, September 9th, while
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: we give everyone at Crooked Media a much-needed break after
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a long year, two years, five years, ten years. I
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: When did we start doing this?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: What's time?
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: 17.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Anyway, people need a break. So we will be off
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: until Thursday the 9th.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Let's get to the news.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: The U.S.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Military evacuation of Afghanistan is nearly over, and the final
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: withdrawal of American forces is scheduled for tomorrow. The good
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: news is that the airlift has flown over 117,000 people
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: out of the country since August 14th, mostly Afghans, as
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: well as almost every American who wants to leave. As
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of Sunday, there were about 250 still trying to get out.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: But the final days of the evacuation have been marked
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: by tragedy. On Thursday, an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 U.S.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: service members and nearly 200 Afghans just outside the airport
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in Kabul. Then on Sunday, U.S. drone strikes destroyed a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: vehicle full of explosives that was set to launch a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: second attack on the airport, though Afghans said the strike
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: also killed as many as nine civilians, including children. The
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: strike came just after the U.S. and 98 other nations
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: announced that they've secured an agreement with the Taliban to
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to allow safe passage for Americans and countless Afghans who
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: still want to leave the country after U.S. troops withdraw
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday. President Biden addressed the nation on Thursday after
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: news of the suicide bombing broke. Here's some of what
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: he said.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: For those who carried out this attack, as well as
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: anyone who wishes America harm, know this.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: We will not forgive.
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: We will not forget.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: We will hunt you down.
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: Make you pay.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I want to start with Thursday's horrific attack, which was
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the bloodiest day for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since 2011. Tommy,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: this was always the nightmare scenario. It was actually one
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that you and Ben talked about, worried about on last
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: week's Pod Save the World. What do we know about
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: how and why ISIS-K was able to pull this off?
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, the ISIS element was always the thing
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: the White House was most worried about because unlike the Taliban,
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: they're not getting handed the keys to run Afghanistan now.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: They don't have responsibility. They're not worried about selling this
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: more moderate image to the world. And they're just going
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: to conduct attacks to try to punish the U.S. So basically,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: you had a scenario where hundreds of thousands of people
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: were trying to get to the airport in Kabul. The
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Taliban was providing this first ring of security. Once you
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: get past the Taliban, there are Marines, U.S. service members
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: on the ground, basically part of the crowd, checking people
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: and trying to check them into the airport. And there's
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: some up on this wall that provided security to the
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: entrance of the airport. And an ISIS suicide bomber managed
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: to slip past the Taliban checkpoint somehow, detonate a suicide
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: vest in an area that was just literally packed with people.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: And the explosion was catastrophic. You know, 170 civilians, women, children,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: innocent people. You know, it's always gutting when you read
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: about U.S. service members killed in combat because what happens
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: time and time again is you just are struck by
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: how young they are. The oldest person killed was 31.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: There were five individuals killed who were 20 years old.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, it's just the most bitter irony
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: that this scenario was exactly what Biden was trying to
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: avoid by ending the war. He didn't want U.S. troops
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: in harm's way. He didn't want Afghan civilians killed. Now
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: we're seeing reports of this drone strike killing maybe seven children. And,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: you know, this is like the reality of war. This
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: is why it's so frustrating to hear Dave Petraeus, H.R. McMaster,
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: all these people on TV talking about how Biden should
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: have kept 2,000, 3,000 troops in Afghanistan and continued the war.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And then they suggest that there wouldn't have been some
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: sort of significant cost. This is the cost. This is
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: what happened.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: U.S.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Troops get killed. Afghan civilians get killed. Women and children
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: get killed. This is the reality of war. This is
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: what Biden was trying to end. And it's just, it's
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: an absolute tragedy.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: It's also so devastating that it seems like we had
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: such credible specific intel on this specific threat you know
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: this was about to happen and and the defense department
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: was worried about it and the intel community was worried
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: about it and it just it it couldn't be stopped
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: um that that to me is just it makes it
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: all the more tragic yeah biden kept getting pushed in
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the days leading up to the attack to extend the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: withdrawal deadline and it seems like this is also an
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: example of why he didn't want to right because he's
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: he the law he he believe that the longer our
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: forces were in harm's way, that the higher the likelihood
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that something like this would happen, right?
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Yes. I mean, look, this mission was, you know, talked
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: about as an evacuation mission. But really, this is one
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: of the most dangerous things our troops have been asked
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: to do in years in Afghanistan. I mean, they're literally surrounded.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: This airport is literally surrounded by Taliban fighters. The city
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: is occupied by the Taliban. We know that there's ISIS
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: elements in Afghanistan. We know there's al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: So every minute that U.S. troops were basically mixing with
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: Afghan civilians trying to get into this airport, they were
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: at risk. And Biden knew that. And it was since
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: the minute this mission started, you had people on TV,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, Biden himself, talking about a
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: severe risk from a terrorist attack. And tragically, they were
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: unable to prevent it. Love it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: You and I have sadly had to write speeches responding
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: to tragedies like the one Biden gave on Thursday. How
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: do you think he handled those remarks and the Q
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: & A that followed?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: He was, I think, devastated. He came out and was
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: extremely sad about what happened. He talked about his son.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: He talked about how hard it was for him to
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: watch these events unfold. He talked about how it fit
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: into the broader goal of why he wanted to leave Afghanistan,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: why he didn't want American service members in this situation
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: for as long as they've been in this situation. And,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: you know, there are people who have been critical of
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: how Biden has conducted themselves in these in these press events.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And like, no, do I think it's advisable to get
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: into a colloquy with fucking Peter Doocy? No, probably not
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: a good idea. But I honestly don't care. I think
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of the the ways in which Biden is
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: criticized for how he manages news cycles as tragedies and
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: serious events unfold are the kind of optics-driven political coverage
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: that Biden is president in part because he refuses to
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: care about.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: I think he cares.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Deeply about the reality on the ground. I have a
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: friend who's a very smart political writer, but I can
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: always count on him to send me like his view,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: which is a kind of conventional wisdom view. And he
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: was like, where is Biden? Why hasn't Biden spoken? What
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I've said is like, I honestly don't know. But what
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I assume is Joe Biden is far more concerned about
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: the reality on the ground than appeasing pundits by giving
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: the kind of remarks that they demand and claim without
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: evidence is what the country needs. And after days and
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: days of pundits on television, in the news, giving military
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: strategy and acting like Searcy standing on the fucking map
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: of Westeros. trying to move the pieces around. I think
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: the truth is Joe Biden is going to follow this
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: policy to its end because he believes it's the right
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: thing to do. And how he specifically manages the messaging
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: on the way there is just, in the grand scheme
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: of things, not nearly as important as what happens in
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the actual in the actual physical world.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: What did you think, Tony?
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, he looked gutted. He looked gutted. And you just,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: you know, there are some people... Look, this man has
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: endured tragedy. He's also had a son who served. He's
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: been working with and around the military for decades. Like,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I think he understands how much these men and women gave.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: What is... hard to stomach and kind of upsetting is
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: you know that the country wants to hear the line
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: about how we're going to hunt you down and we're
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: going to kill you.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I have here obligatory soundbite for the critics.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: But as we saw days later, days later, it sounds
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: like that mentality perpetuated the war and led to more
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: strikes on targets that killed 10 civilians. You know, and
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: I'm not blaming, I don't know the exact details of
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: what happened. None of us do. We're That's the cycle
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: we need to break. We need to stop fucking killing people.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: We need to end a war that has not progressed
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: in any meaningful way or helped us, made us safer,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: more secure for 20 years.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: You can criticize Joe Biden's decision on the withdrawal. You
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: can say that it probably helps him politically, domestically to
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: have said that he wants to withdraw from a war,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: which is what he said all during the campaign. And
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Trump sort of had the same view. But what has
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: been clear over the last couple of weeks is that
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: it is a decision that he deeply believes in for
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: personal reasons. Like this is not something he's doing out
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: of politics. This is not something he's doing because he's
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: forced to. He, partly because of his own experience, he's
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: had family members serve. He was in the Obama administration
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: arguing against the Afghanistan war there or arguing for withdrawal
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: way back when. This is something that he deeply believes in.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And he's been consistent about it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And he's been consistent about it. And he's even been
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: consistent about it. during the last few weeks when things
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: have become quite chaotic. This is what he believes in.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I also thought that it was good, by the way,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: when Ducey asked him, does he take responsibility? He said, yes,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I take responsibility. Of course, he did then mention Trump again,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: but look, he took responsibility for it. I don't know
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: what more you can ask from him.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Look, he took responsibility, and then he went to Dover
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Air Force Base for the dignified transfer ceremony, and he
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: met with the families of the people who were killed,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: and I can't imagine a more difficult or painful thing
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: for those families or for the president who made the
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: decision that led to the deaths of these men and women.
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: So he took responsibility.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: He also made a point of like emphasizing complete unanimity
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: among commanders and how to achieve the mission saying that like,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I'm giving, you know, I've given them everything they needed.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: It seems like he wanted to make clear that the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: tactics were being sort of decided by the military and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: he was deferring to them on that.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. There have been a lot of,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of D.C. pundit generals and war planners
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: making a big deal about the closing of Bagram Air Base.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And I think that his Biden and his staff has
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: been trying to make the point that the decision to
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: end the war and to end it on August 31st
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: was a presidential decision. But then how you do it,
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: the military tactics are determined by the best military advice. Now,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: all of that military advice is going to be constrained
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: by the broader strategic decision about winding down the number
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: of troops there, how you can defend a place like
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Bagram that's massive and sprawling, et cetera, et cetera. So
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: I think I get what he's doing, but there's some
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: risk to that because you're going to face some pushback,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I think. Right.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: You own the strategy as president, but the military owns
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the tactics is basically what he's trying to say.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I also, I.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Do think it is an environment where When you have
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: a chaotic, ugly, tragic situation unfolding and you have all
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: these cynical kind of members of the foreign policy establishment saying,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the way I would have done it, it would have
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: been amazing. The way I would have done it, none
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: of this would happen. Everything would have been perfect. We
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: would have had this outpost. No Americans would have died.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: The situation would be less chaotic. We'd been able to
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: get everybody out. Oh, is that really how your alternate
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: scenario would have played out?
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Right. I mean, Bagram's like 50 miles from Kabul. I mean,
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: do you think it would be easy to get 100,000, 200,000
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Afghans from Kabul or wherever they live in the country
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: to Bagram? I don't know that that's true.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: When you're not the one making the decisions, you get
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to opine about counterfactuals until the end of time. That's
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: what happens in these situations. And no one can prove
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: you wrong because it's a counterfactual.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: And you and Ben talked about this. You've talked about
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: this over the last two weeks. But man, the confidence...
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: with which people who are responsible for this calamity express
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: new opinions is extraordinary. And because I'm not a military strategist,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I have no idea the tactics to protect Kabul. I
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: have no fucking idea. But what I do know is
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that a lot of these people talking about how easy
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: it will be, how much better a policy they could
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: have implemented, that a lot of these people have been
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: saying the same thing for 20 years. 20 years.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: We didn't win the war when there were 130,000 ISAF
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: members fighting in Afghanistan. I think a little humility should
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: be required at this point when we're talking about how
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: easy it would have been to maintain a status quo that, oh,
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: by the way, that status quo led to the death of,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: I think, 10,000 members of the Afghan security forces last year,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: thousands of civilians. I mean, the other thing, just like
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: as I'm talking with two speechwriters, can we also stop
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: talking about wars and using the phrase American blood and treasure.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: It's so dehumanizing. It's not blood. It's fucking human beings
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: who died. It's not treasure. We're not pirates. It's taxpayer
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: dollars that if they weren't spent on blowing up places
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: in Afghanistan could have been spent on a school. Why
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: do we talk like that?
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Note taken.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: No, it's a good one. And I'll say like, you know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Obama has said that before. He used to say that.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Everybody does. It's like the thing you say to sound important.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Because it's a cliche and you don't think about the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: cliche and then you're like, oh yeah, that's pretty, that's
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: not great.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I do think that's like part of a larger problem
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: in how we talk about America's foreign policy generally.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: You know, H.R.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: McMaster called Trump's deal with the Taliban a surrender agreement,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: a surrender agreement. And I saw that and I was like,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: We're not talking about this, honestly, right? That the American
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: press both, I think, in part out of genuine respect
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: for people who have served and died or lost people
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: in this in this in Afghanistan over the last 20 years,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: but in part, I think, out of a kind of. innate,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: subconscious jingoism, don't want to talk about this for what
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: it is, which is we lost this war. We surrendered.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump surrendered. They released thousands of Taliban prisoners. He
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: promised to leave. No part of the deal protected Afghans.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: It set a date certain in May. We are surrendering.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: See, I don't think we surrender because I think surrender means...
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: that you sort of give some sort of control over
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: your country to the person who won. I do think
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: it's a withdrawal because we're just saying, okay, we're going
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: to get the hell out of your country. You know
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: what I mean?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: We're extricating ourselves from your civil war.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: The World War II surrender, basically, the United States occupies
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Japan for a long period of time. It's not like
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: the Taliban are coming here. So that would be my
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: only quibble with that word. But I hear what you're saying.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: The language used around this is very frustrating because it's
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: all wrapped up in pride. in American exceptionalism and jingoism,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: because it talks about the straight New York Times copy
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: from like Peter Baker or whoever, is like the U.S.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: was humiliated in Afghanistan. Countries don't get humiliated. People do.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: The other, there was something in that Peter Baker piece too,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: where it said fewer than 100 American troops died in
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: combat in Afghanistan over the past five years, roughly the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: equivalent of the number of Americans currently dying from COVID-19
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: every two hours. What the fuck is that?
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of people have been making that comparison, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, what are you.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: First of all, this is the objective news analysis.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Your role here is to put 100 dead humans in
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the context of an unrelated global pandemic because you're trying
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: to make the case that it wasn't that bad?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: What is the argument there? To your point, Tommy, there's
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: something more important than humiliation, and it's men and women
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: dying in battle. Like U.S. men and women, right? Like
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: there's something a little more important than like the country's
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: ego being damaged.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Well, it's optics.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: It's like the fact that we're sending men and women
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: to fight and die.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Humiliation is optics. Yes.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: And what they're saying is leaving entirely in this way
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: was humiliating for the U.S. But what would not be
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: humiliating would have been keeping 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 troops there,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: continuing to provide air support for Afghan security forces and
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: perpetuating a civil war that is killing thousands and thousands
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: of Afghan civilians. There's no discussion in the U.S. media
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: about the deaths of Afghan people. And that is a
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: real problem.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Also on par with sort of the language of humiliation
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: is this language of credibility, which is again about optics.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: The idea that like the way the U.S. means credibility
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: is by doing things that run counter to its interests
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: over many, many years. you know, spending all of its money, right.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Killing people, causing the deaths of their own people in
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: the service of a failed mission. Like that's how you
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: earn credibility as opposed to having a realistic view of
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: what your power can and cannot do in the world.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: This is, this is what losing the war looks like.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: That's just, um, one of the questions Biden got at
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the press conference, um, was about a Politico report that
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the U S gave lists of Americans and Afghans who
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: were approved for evacuation to the Taliban. Um, Obviously, this
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: has caused a great deal of furor on the right,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to say the least, as well as in the media. Tommy,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: can you talk about sort of why that happened, what
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the deal with that story is?
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that initial Politico report was pretty
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: sloppy and left the impression that the U.S. drew up
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: a list of like 100,000 Afghan interpreters and said, here, Taliban,
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: please let these people through. Here's the full list of
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: people we want out. And they allowed some congressional source
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: to describe it as, quote, a kill list. The White
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: House strongly denied that. They said that that's not at
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: all true. I don't think they're that stupid, by the way.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: What Tony Blinken said happened over the weekend was that
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: In some limited instances, you had a bus full of
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: people coming to a Taliban checkpoint. And the U.S. in
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: advance said, hey, this bus is coming to this checkpoint.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Here's who's on it. Some of them don't have papers.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: So we're letting you know. And that's how we're going
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: to get them through. It sounds like that worked.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I was going to say the Taliban didn't kill them.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: They let them through.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: We were able to successfully extract a lot of these people.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: I know this sounds jarring for people, but the reality
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: of our relationship with the Taliban is has changed a
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: lot in the last couple of weeks. It went from
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: enemy that we were fighting to people we are working with.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: And then we also, the reality is more complicated. We've
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: been negotiating with them for a long time. You know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: the Trump cut this deal in February, 2020, but the
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Obama administration was negotiating with the Taliban back in 2010.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: So it's complicated, but there was not some like, you know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: giant Excel sheet of Afghan interpreters handed to the Taliban.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Like this political report made it sound, but you know.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very irresponsible when I read it. The deadline
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: for withdrawal is tomorrow. What do you think the Biden
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: administration is worried about as this comes to a close
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and what happens after our troops leave?
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're just going to hold their breath until
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: the last flight is out. There's some reports today that
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: there were rockets fired at the airport. The good news
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: is those rockets didn't hit anything. They might have landed
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: in a neighborhood, but there are no civilian casualties that
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: we know of. The U.S. has some defensive weapons around
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: the airport. There's something called a C-RAM that shoots down
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: rockets or mortars.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Do they use those to shoot down those rockets?
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: It sounds like they were engaged. You can basically hear them.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: It sounds like a machine gun going off. And, you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: these planes that are taking off, these C-17s, they can reduce,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: they can fire out flares and other things that are
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: supposed to, you know, get a heat-sinking missile to miss
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: the target. You know, but this is the scariest part
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: of this whole thing, in my opinion. Like ISIS, maybe
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: parts of the Taliban, maybe parts of the Khani group,
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: might want to take a shot at us on the
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: way out. And God help us if they got their
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: hands on some sort of like advanced surface air missile
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: technology or whatever. After August 31st, the U.S. has said
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: that the U.S. and 97 countries have cut a deal
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: with the Taliban that will allow us to keep getting
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: foreign nationals and Afghan allies out of the country. Jake
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: Sullivan and Tony and people who were on the shows
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: over the weekend said that we'll use economic leverage and
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: other diplomatic means to hold them to that. it's going
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: to be tough to enforce.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Like how do we know if they're not letting people
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: get out?
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Good question.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, they've been, they've also been hunting. I mean,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: part of the deal was that it protected American service members,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: but not Afghans. I mean, Taliban, while making these claims
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: has also been hunting and killing people that worked with us.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Do you think, Tommy, that the U.S. will engage in
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: sort of covert operations to get some people out or
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: is that?
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: My guess is the CIA is working overtime to, find
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: ways to get all their sources and people out of there.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: And that, you know, they're, they're these kind of ad hoc, um,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: you know, veterans groups working to get people out. There
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: are other countries are working to get people out. I'm
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: sure the U S military and the state department will
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: continue to work to get contacts out. So this is
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: going to be something that I think lasts a long time.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about how the politics of all this are
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: playing out. Republican politicians in Congress aren't just criticizing President
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Biden over Thursday's terrorist attack. Many of them are calling
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: on him to leave office, either through resignation, impeachment, or
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: by invoking the 25th Amendment. When pressed by reporters on
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: what they would have done differently in Afghanistan or what
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: we should do now, Republican responses have been all over
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the place, hypocritical, nonsensical, contradictory. A perfect example was House
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said that there should be
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: no troops in Afghanistan right before he said that we
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: should have kept troops at Bagram Air Base. and then
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: said that President Biden shouldn't have negotiated with the Taliban
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: before defending President Trump for negotiating with the Taliban. Let's
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: take a listen.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Here's an administration that said they do not trust the Taliban,
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: but they turn around and say they depend on them.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: Why would we ever depend on the Taliban? Why wouldn't
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: we kept Bagram to start out with? Why wouldn't we,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: if we ended up in that air base, why wouldn't
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: we have pushed it back out, created enough military troops
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: to create safe passage? Why would you negotiate with the Taliban?
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Question. You said he shouldn't be negotiating with the Taliban.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Trump did that, too, to be clear.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: So it was wrong.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Trump also had conditions and he upheld the conditions.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: That's not true. No, he didn't.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: It didn't even come close to holding up the conditions.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: But what do you make of the Republican calls for
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden to leave office over this? It was I
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: can't not laugh about it. I mean, it's fucking nuts.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: It's nuts.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: So it's a hundred percent cynical. Obviously it's about, you know,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: scoring points against Joe Biden during this new South. Kevin
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: McCarthy is not smart and also completely in that he
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: is 100%.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't know he was a military tactician by the way.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: He's another one.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: He's another one.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Fucking.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: He's another person, uh, moving little ships around on a
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: fucking map risk.
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: He's playing risk.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: The, uh, Kevin McCarthy is always, he does not need
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: his words to be consistent. He just is 100% trying
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: to score points in any given news cycle. The, The
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: calling for the resignation is so cynical in two ways. Obviously,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: it's cynical in the ordinary way of kind of pitching
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: forward to try to score points and trying to kind
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: of take a shot at Biden in an opportunity to
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: do that. The other piece of this is could not
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: but feel like what this is doing is trying to
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: retcon the calls for Trump's resignation, that trying to make
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: it so that the calls for Trump's resignation were not
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: an extraordinary response to an extraordinary threat, but a kind
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: of new normal of calling for resignation.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: This is what they told us at the time. Republican
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: politicians said during the Trump impeachments they were going to
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: get revenge against the next Democratic president. Lindsey Graham said it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: A bunch of them said it. They've just been waiting
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: for a pretense to do it. There is no doubt
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: in my mind that if Republicans take the House, they
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: will try to impeach Joe Biden and the House will
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: impeach Joe Biden. There's no doubt in my mind whether
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: it's over Afghanistan, whether it's over something else. It was
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: destined from the moment that Trump got impeached that they
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: were going to seek their revenge on this, especially after
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: fucking rioters stormed the Capitol and they impeached him the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: second time. They absolutely were going to do this from
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the beginning. It is such a joke.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: But like, you know what? It was stupid for everyone
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: to be like, sir, resign, Mr. Trump, sir, resign, because
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: the New York Times reported that Steve Bannon was mean
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: to Jared Kushner or whatever. I don't know. I think
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: this is like, This is now the sort of status
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: quo rhetoric around any mistake a president makes, any presidential decision,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: people are going to call on them to resign. There's
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: no context. No one thinks about the fact that in 1983,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: 300 some odd people were killed in Lebanon by a
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: terrorist attack. I don't think people were calling on Ronald
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: Reagan to resign.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Not one, not one Democrat called on him to resign.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: And they were killed in the Marine barracks six months
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: after there was a terrorist attack on the embassy and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the troops were still there. And then they were killed
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and no one said anything because when a president makes
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: a strategic military decision that leads to American casualties, you
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: don't call them to resign.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And by the way, he didn't retaliate militarily. But,
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: you know, over the weekend, when you turn on the
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Sunday shows, it felt like 2003 all over again. There's
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Lindsey Graham calling for more wars. You know, you'd put
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: on 50 Cent in the club, you know, go back
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: 20 years, get in that mindset.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: It's the same shit.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: It's the same people making the same arguments for more war.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: And I think I have a lot to criticize about
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: how Biden executed with this withdrawal. I think we can
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Monday morning quarterback and think there might've been better ways
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: to do it. But the fundamental decision to get out
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: of Afghanistan after 20 years was the right one. And
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: I'm glad they're defending it.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: But also, you're right. You can absolutely criticize Joe Biden
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: for this. And if you really think it was horrible,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: then you should oppose him in the next election because
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: that's how our democracy works. You don't, you know, you
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: don't overturn the will of the voters.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Except for in California, John.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Except in California. But I do think,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, to your point, Tommy, I think the two times,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the two times that Donald Trump was impeached, they were
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: for legitimate.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: I'm not arguing that. No, no, no.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: But it's a good point that you make that like,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: be careful when you just say that a president should
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: fucking resign because high crimes and misdemeanors is, should be
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: treated as a real thing. And I think Trump certainly
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: committed those in both instances. And this is absolutely not
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: one of them. How hard do you think Biden and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: or other Democrats in Congress should push back on these Republicans?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Because that's sort of the next front in this. And Biden,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I think, in the middle of this crisis has sort
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of held back from hitting back Republicans, I think rightly so.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Democrats have also been critical of Joe Biden and they've
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: kind of, you know, been holding their fire. But at
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: some point, the second Trump was out of the picture,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Republicans once again are for forever wars. And we should
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: make that a big part of yes, of of of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: if they want to make Afghanistan part of the midterm campaign,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: then fine. You are for continuing America's longest war. You
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: want more Americans in harm's way. You want more violence,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: more cost, more chaos. That's what you believe. We have
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a different way. We don't support this endless war anymore.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's an important point, Lovett, because I think
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: there's a couple different ways you could go at Republicans
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: over how they've been acting in the last several weeks.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: You could talk about the incoherence of their argument. You
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: could talk about their hypocrisy. I don't necessarily think those
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: two arguments carry that much weight with people. like Republican hypocrisy.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's, that's new. That's surprising. I think the,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the idea that these people are for endless war, they
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: want to spend more us dollars in Afghanistan. They want
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to send more troops to fight and die over there.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And look, some of them are trying to say some
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of them are in the Trump winger, but I don't know. No,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: we wanted to withdraw too. That may be right with
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: some of them, but like Mitt Romney was out there
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: this weekend talking about leaving forces there. Lindsey Graham was
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: talking about leaving forces. They're like, there's enough people in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: that party to, that want to extend this war that
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I absolutely think the Democrats should tag them with it
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: over the next several months.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think most voters are smart enough to
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: know that these calls for his resignation are unserious and
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: they know how elections work and when they occur. You know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Well, so Republicans don't currently have the votes to do
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: much of anything about this, but there are plenty of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Democrats in Congress who are calling for hearings and investigations
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: into the administration's handling of the withdrawal. What do you
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: think about that in light of Thursday's attack?
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Tommy? I mean, look, hearings are appropriate. You know, I
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: think Democrats are incredibly unhelpful. Bob Menendez, in particular, is
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: unbelievably unhelpful to almost every Democratic president over the last
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: decade or two, whether it's the Iran deal or Cuba
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: policy or.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Or his own scandals.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Or Biden's views towards Afghanistan. That said, like, you're seeing
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: leaks of classified notes from calls that occurred on Wednesday
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: and Thursday before this horrible attack in Kabul. So there's
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: going to be all these questions about what intelligence the
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: United States had when they had it, who made the
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: decision to keep open the various gates at this airport,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: knowing there was this threat from ISIS. Like all of
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: these are appropriate questions, I think, to try to get at.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: And the reality is if the Republicans take back the
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: House or the Senate, they are going to have their
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: own set of investigations and their own set of hearings.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: They want this to be Benghazi and it's going to
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: be brutal and you.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Can and you can bet too that they will use
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: so they rejected a bipartisan commission to look at January
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: 6th and then we did this sort of select committee
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: and you can bet that they're going to use that
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: as a means to have fewer Democrats on any Investigation
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: if they're in control, that's one thing that I'd be
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: keeping an eye on the other thing I would say
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: that too is yeah, Tommy's right Like these are they're
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: important questions to be answered. But in reality we are
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: not going to be Evacuating Afghanistan after a 20-year war again.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: But there are a lot of lessons we can learn
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: about what led to this. And so my view would be,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: if you want to investigate what happened in Afghanistan, we
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: should investigate what happened in Afghanistan. But it shouldn't be
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: about the last two weeks or the last two months.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: It should be about the last 20 years.
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, I think the answers are going to
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: be really unsatisfying about sort of how this terrorist attack
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: happened on Thursday. The reality is, it's an incredibly dangerous mission.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: We need to get people out of Kabul. a hundred
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: some odd thousand at last count. And doing that required
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: putting U.S. service members in harm's way. Are there things
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: they could have done better? Sure. Are there things we
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: don't know about now that we'll learn about later that
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: might change how we think about all this? Very, very possible.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: But like we had the same conversation around Benghazi where
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: you could absolutely can and should criticize the State Department
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: for not having enough security at some of these diplomatic outposts.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: But the broader reality is that being a diplomat or
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: being a U.S. service member is a dangerous job and
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: you serve in dangerous places and there's inherent risk and
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: everybody knows that going into it. I'm not saying that
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: to excuse the way this was handled or anything else,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: but like that's the reality. And that's kind of what
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: you're going to uncover as part of these investigations. And
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: to your point, Lovett, like the broader lesson should be
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: stop with these wars and stop nation building in countries
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: like Afghanistan or X. Stop invading places that we know
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: nothing about. Stop staying there for 20 fucking years.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: One other piece of it too, that you and Ben
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: talked about this, that there was this dissensus for a
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: long time around how well equipped Afghan security forces were
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: and that the military was saying that, no, they're ready.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: And then there was a disagreement with the intelligence community.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: That's a massive scandal. That's a massive scandal that like
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: for a very long time, there was a great deal
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: of dishonesty about what our mission had and had not accomplished.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Also like, Just what was going on over the last
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: year while the Trump administration was negotiating with the Taliban
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: that allowed this to unfold so quickly, right? If they
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: want to investigate this, fine. If Democrats allow this to
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: be a conversation about the Biden administration alone or what
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: happened in the last few weeks of an unfolding disaster
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: that took place over years, I think that that would
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: be a big mistake.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: It's a disservice.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: From a purely political standpoint, Democrats have two options here.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: They control the White House. They control Congress. They can
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: either decide to not have an investigation right now, Republicans
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: will then spend the next year calling for an investigation,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: running on a midterm message of calling for an investigation.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: And then if Republicans win, they will certainly hold investigations
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: that look a lot more like the Benghazi circus, right?
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: So you can either do that or you can decide, well,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: we control the committees now. Let's have our own investigations
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: where we can sort of shape this, make sure that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: we have a broader investigation that talks about the lessons
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: that we learned from this war and sort of control
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the narrative. Now, the downside of that is now you
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: have a bunch of coverage for the next year or
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: for several months about mistakes in Afghanistan, stuff like that,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: that may damage you politically.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: But I don't know.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I think I come down on the side of now
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that they control the committees and they can hold sort
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: of a proper investigation, you might as well do that
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: before you let Republicans just make it a circus.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fair point. I mean, listen, this is
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: an enormous moment in U.S. history. I mean, we ended
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: a 20-year war. I do think a look back is
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: important and probably completely appropriate. And that includes, like you said,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: love it the last couple of weeks. But then maybe
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: we should also look at the fact that, you know,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: for the past 10 or 20 years, we've been allying
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: with people like General Dostum, who wrote and wrote about
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: a great length in his book, who was a warlord
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: who is well known for locking, I think, a thousand
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: people in rail cars and shooting at them. Post 9-11 hysteria,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: fear and hubris.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Republicans are obviously hitting Biden so hard because they
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: see an opening. His approval rating has dropped to the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: lowest level of his presidency. not just because of Afghanistan,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: but because of the Delta surge and economic concerns like inflation.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: The administration is currently facing what appears to be a
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: hurricane that is devastating Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. I
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: don't know if we ever had an August this bad
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: in the Obama administration, but we did have some bad ones. Tommy,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: can you talk about what it feels like to be
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: inside a White House consumed by multiple crises?
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: Just thinking back to... Aside from not fun. Well, I
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: was thinking back to sort of like the most tumultuous periods.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, I got the National Security Council spokesman job in,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: I think, January of 2010. It was sort of right
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: before the Haiti earthquake and then the Arab Spring. And
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: there was a period around Benghazi. And you can see
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: what it's like on Biden's face. You can see it
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: on Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken's face when they're out briefing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: After Benghazi, I think we were doing like 7 a.m.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: situation room check-ins and then 7 p.m. later that day.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: When you do go home, you're not getting sleep. You're
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: getting called in the middle of the night with some
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: sort of update from the situation room. You're getting new
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: information constantly. You know that some of that information is
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: going to be wrong, but you still have to brief Congress.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: You still have to brief the press in real time
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: to the best of your ability. You're trying to get
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: answers from people in different continents, in different time zones.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: You're trying to coordinate and hold accountable massive government agencies
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: like the Pentagon and the State Department and the intelligence community.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: and actually get them to do what you want them
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: to do. And then if you're Jake Sullivan or Tony Blinken,
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: you're briefing the president and the vice president, and you're
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: dealing with however they feel at the moment. Biden's probably
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: not pretty happy right now, understandably. And it's completely unsustainable.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: And then on top of that, you can't just drop
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: all the other shit you have to do. I mean,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I read the Wall Street Journal this morning. There's a
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: report that North Korea is resuming nuclear enrichment. So I'm
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: sure the NSC is meeting about that. The prime minister
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: of Israel was in town on Thursday, the day of
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: this attack. You're supposed to meet with Biden. You can't
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: just drop him. This hurricane's barreling down. So they are
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: in the barrel. And the fallout from this in terms
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: of the impact on the administration, the individuals involved, Congress,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: it's just beginning. They're the beginning of this.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you've got to remember that these are human beings, right?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Everyone is tired. Everything is reactive. There's very little time
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: for planning or for proactive messaging about any of the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: agenda items you want to pass. I think they had
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: planned to talk about the economic plan and hold events.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: You can't do any of that. Kamala Harris was supposed
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: to campaign with Gavin Newsom. That gets canceled. These are
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: just small things. But when you're in the White House
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: and there's 10 different things hitting you at once and
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: all you have to do is you don't have time
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: to really digest a bunch of information and then react.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: You're reacting in real time constantly. There's a foxhole mentality
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: when you're just getting attacked all the time and you're
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: just trying to push back. It is fucking brutal.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: It is brutal. I mean, brutal on your best day.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: Like, I mean, one of the most, like, weirdly soul-crushing
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: times for me in the administration were the days after
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: the bin Laden operation because the U.S. leads this unbelievable,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: unprecedented operation to kill Osama bin Laden. We asked John Brennan,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: who has been hunting that fucker for 15 years, who, like,
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: literally killed people he knew. And John Briefs gets some
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: facts wrong based on the best information he had at
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: the time. And then like we spend a week having
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: John called a liar and trying to sort of like
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: clean up or walk back mistakes we made. And that's
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: what they were. They were mistakes. But they get framed
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: as lies or efforts to mislead the press. I mean
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: you know Jake Sullivan incredibly well. Love it. Like he's
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: like the nicest, the brilliant guy. He's super thoughtful. But
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: like he looks like, you know, he's been in the barrel.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: He looks tired.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: I remember the oil spill in 2010 in the Obama
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: White House, and it was all-consuming. Every single cable channel
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: was talking about the oil spill, and there was like
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a little box in the bottom of the screen that
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: just showed the oil shooting out into the Gulf and saying,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you know, Obama's like the worst president since Carter, and
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: he's not doing anything about the oil spill.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that Barack Obama has not personally figured out how
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: to get that hat in the well.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He couldn't plug it himself.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: A scuba tank.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: And I remember Robert Gibbs tells the story that they're
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: all sitting in Gibbs' office, and Obama's there, and a
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of other advisors, and as they're figuring out this
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: oil spill crisis... someone comes in and says, oh, by
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the way, there's this article in Rolling Stone about Stan McChrystal,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: and now he has to fire Stan McChrystal.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: That was me.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: That was you.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: See, there you go. That was you.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: And that crisis happens as you're dealing with the oil
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: spill crisis, right? And so these multiple things happen at once,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and it's pretty brutal.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is also that so much of what,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: in situations like that, so much of what is unfolding
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: is the question, will this crisis negatively impact the politics
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: of this administration.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of everything else that we're doing.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Of everything else that they're doing. And so often the
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: way that political punditry and political coverage works, the question,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: will this have a negative political impact on the administration,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: is the means by which the crisis creates a negative
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: political impact on the administration. You end up in this
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: sort of like rhetorical loop of we're still talking about this.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Isn't that a problem?
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Because a bunch of dumb Democrats answer phone calls from
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Politico or the Wall Street Journal or whoever and say,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, I'm really worried about this and how it's
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: going to impact the midterms.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: You've got to unburden yourself to a reporter to really
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: make it feel good.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, for Jake and the NSC people, all
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: you can do is hope that the NSC process and
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: structure that you built can hold all the weight that
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: you're trying to carry in the moment. In weeks like this,
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: you're not always sure that it can.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: So Republicans have been pretty clear that their argument for
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the midterms will be that the country has fallen into chaos.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden is too weak and incompetent to do anything
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: about it. How worried should the White House and Democrats
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: be about that message and how should they think about responding?
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: I think that they should be worried about the message
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: insofar as the country is in chaos and dissolution. Do
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: I think they should be worrying about it in terms
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: of like the specific news cycle of this moment?
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: No, I think.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden will be judged by his actions, by the
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: actual consequences of his policy choices. And beyond that, I
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: think they are doing their best to kind of share information,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: manage the news cycles as they're happening without being so
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: buffeted by them that they change course. And I think
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: that is, I think, the signature aspect of the way
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: this administration has done politics from the beginning. It is
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: partly why Joe, it's how Joe Biden became president. I
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: think it's actually how Jen Psaki conducts herself in that
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: briefing room incredibly well every single day And I think
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: that is their strength. They know when to respond and
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: they know when not to respond. And as long as
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: they keep doing that, the test for this administration will
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: actually play out with what's happening with the infrastructure bill,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: what's happening with the, you know, giant, what are we
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: calling it?
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: The other one.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: The other one.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: That's part of the problem.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: The Build Back Better plan.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: The reconciliation bill rolls off the tongue.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: The reconciliation, the Build Back Better checklist for change.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Or you can just say the $ 3.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: 5 trillion whatever. No, then Dan hits it. you and
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: says don't talk about the cost i listened to thursday
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: pot how dare you john i'm yelling at him for.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: You just making sure just checking nine we need a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: jargon we.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Need a jargon jar and a price tag jar that
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: we keep here that we put money in every time
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: we we screw this up because uh dan's right but
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: no i mean one that this administration is very lucky
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: that they have sake briefing every day because she is
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: so seasoned and ready for this To your broader point, John,
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, odds are, right, like that they will, the
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: voters will vote in 2022 based on the economy, COVID,
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: and then we'll just deal with a bunch of gerrymandered districts.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say that. And what gerrymandered
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: district they live in.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Right, right. The thing that I think is unfair, but
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: I think is what Republicans are going to go for
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: is to say that, to fold this into the Joe
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Biden is too old framework and say, look, Sleepy Joe
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: is too old. He's not up for the job. Look
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: at this totally unfair, out of context photo of him,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: you know, blinking or something where his eyes look closed
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: or ducking his head because he's listening to someone speak.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: And they want to make it about that, about weakness, about,
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: you know, whatever. Like you see it on Don Jr.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: 's Instagram every day. But we'll see if that works.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: So I completely agree with you that that's what they're
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: going to try, right? Like Republicans want this to be
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: a referendum.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: That's just it.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: When you're running an election, you're the challenger and they're
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: running everything, you want to be a referendum. And I
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: think the danger is for the Biden administration, even if
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the pandemic recedes, the economy improves and Afghanistan fades from
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the headlines, there's still going to be a lot of
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: voters who are dissatisfied with the state of the country, right?
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: That's just the way it is. And so, you know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden always used to say about Obama in the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: 2012 election, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: to the alternative. And I think that Democrats have to
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: start painting the picture for voters now.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Another reason he's president, by the way.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: That's right, yeah. I think that Democrats have to start
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: painting a picture for voters now about what Republicans will
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: do if they take power, right? This idea that like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: just judge Joe Biden on the economy and the pandemic, right?
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I do think that's what ultimately voters are going to
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: judge him on, but you have to start, and look,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: it's not appropriate to do right now in the middle
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of the crisis, and I don't even think it's appropriate
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: for the White House itself to do, but Democrats in
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: general- especially Democrats in Congress, Democrats who are running again,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: all the outside committees, like they have to start painting
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: a picture of like, OK, maybe you're not completely happy
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: with what's going on right now, but this is what's
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: going to happen if you give these guys powers right now.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Endless investigations, impeachment, tax cuts for the wealthy, endless wars
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, whatever the message is, you have to start
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: doing the comparison now, because if it's a referendum, that
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: never usually goes well, even if things are going pretty OK.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Joe needs the mood music in the country to be good.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're seeing this in California right now. People
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: are just pissed. They are pissed at the world. They're
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: pissed at COVID. They're pissed at their economic situation. And
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: they're blaming Gavin Newsom, even though his decisions didn't really
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: have as much of an impact on their lives or
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: on COVID restrictions as probably local decisions. Now going to
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: French Laundry wasn't a great idea.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: I think it was the most expensive fucking dinner in
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: the history of humankind.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: But again, if, if, but they're just pissed and they're like,
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: fuck this guy, I'm going to vote, you know, to,
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: to recall him.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: And if Gavin pulls this off, it's going to be
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: because in the final weeks they were like, this is
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: what California is going to look like if a right
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: wing Republican takes over. If he wins, that will be
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: why they did that. And so, and look, this isn't in,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: this isn't in Biden's character, really. He doesn't like to
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: hit Republicans very hard. That's not how he ran. But
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: I think even to your point, to show a little
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: fight at some point and to not show that you're
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: sort of this weak leader buffeted by events, which is
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: what the Republican want the narrative to be, to show
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: a little fight here on the part of Biden as
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: we get closer to midterm season, I think is going
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: to be really important for him. Okay. When we come back,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Love It, we'll talk to NYU professor Melissa Murray about
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's decision on the eviction moratorium and Stephen
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Breyer's latest comments about his possible retirement.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's extended eviction moratorium
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: on Thursday, ending protections against hundreds of thousands of renters
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: financially affected by COVID-19 and allowing evictions to resume. Also,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gave an interview where he
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: denied living in outer space. Joining us now to discuss
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: this and more is NYU professor of law and host
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: of the podcast Strict Scrutiny, Melissa Murray. Welcome back to
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: the pod.
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: So that our listeners can understand the difference. Can you
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: tell us why the court allowed the moratorium the first time,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: but not this extension?
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: Well, the first time that the moratorium was considered, it
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: was a moratorium that had been passed as part of
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: the CARES Act. So Congress had actually issued the first
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: moratorium as part of that broader legislative package. Then the
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: CARES Act, of course, the moratorium from the CARES Act
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: elapsed later that summer, and Congress didn't take steps to
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: renew it. And at that point, the CDC stepped in
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: and issued its own moratorium. That later came before the court,
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: and the court there said that it would not actually
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: rule against the moratorium, although the critical vote there was
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: from Justice Kavanaugh, who expressed some skepticism that the agency
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: had the authority to actually issue a moratorium. But he
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: said that because it was going to be elapsing in
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: a few weeks, he was just going to let it
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: run its course. But he strongly suggested that that he
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: really thought this was something that Congress, as opposed to
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: an agency, needed to do.
• 48:03
  Speaker 6: And then when.
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: Congress did not step in and the CDC again extended
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: the moratorium after the second one elapsed, then this came
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: before the court. And not surprisingly, Justice Kavanaugh was not
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: willing to allow it to continue. And he voted with
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: his conservative brethren to allow this to be permanently eviscerated.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: So this was not unexpected, as you said, but it
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: is strange, right, that like what is the legal doctrine
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: that says you can do it for a little, but
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: that's it?
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: So, I mean, there is.
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: No legal doctrine that says that you can do it
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: for a little. I think here, it sort of evinces
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: Justice Kavanaugh's very pragmatic approach to things. He noted that
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: he was very uncomfortable with the prospect of an agency
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: issuing a moratorium, a sweeping as the one that came
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: before the court, but it was going to elapse in
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: just a couple of days or weeks. And He thought,
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: you know, might as well continue that course. But he
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: was very strong in his view that in his mind,
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: Congress really was the actor that needed to act here.
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: And when Congress didn't act and the agency acted again
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: to extend the moratorium, then I think the jig was up.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: And he sort of called the question, join the other
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: five conservatives over the dissents of the three liberal justices.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: So the CDC tried to satisfy, at least in part,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: the concerns that Kavanaugh had by trying to gear this
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: around places that were particularly hit hard. Now it ended
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: up catching 90% of the country was sort of trying
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: to have it both ways, right? It's a broad moratorium,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: but also a directed moratorium. Are there more legal options
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: available to the Biden administration now without Congress acting? What
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: do you think?
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: Well, it's a really good question.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: It's not clear that the CDC had no authority to
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: act here. It was acting under a public health law
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: that allows it to take steps to make regulations for
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: the public health. But the court said that that statute
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: really only contemplated sort of quotidian measures like pest fumigation
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: or eliminating different kinds of lead abatement or things like
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: that in particular homes, not the kind of sweeping rent
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: relief and assistance that the eviction moratorium would provide. I
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: think it's a pretty open question, as the dissent suggests,
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: to say that allowing for some kind of rent abatement
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: or assistance in the midst of a public global health
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: crisis is not within the remit of that particular statute.
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: I think that's a pretty broad question. And one that
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: this very short, although it's longer than most of the
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: opinions that come out on the court shadow docket is
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: didn't really go into an address. It said that, you know,
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: the statute only contemplates these kinds of bare bones issues,
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: not the kind of sweeping relief that the moratorium encompasses.
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: And again, I think that is a question that really
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: could be more fully briefed and answered, as Justice Breyer
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: suggested in his dissent. This is not something that we
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: should sort of deal with casually on our shadow docket.
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: It's something that really needs to come before the court
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: and should be entitled to full briefing and argument on
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: the merits because it's a meaty, meaty question.
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: What does that mean going forward? Not sure what it
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: means for Congress.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: Congress is obviously the actor that two-thirds of the court
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: would like to see moving on something like this, if
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: we are going to get any movement on it. And
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: it doesn't seem that Congress in its current composition is
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: eager to take the steps necessary to reinstate a moratorium
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: of this kind.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about the shadow docket?
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: You know, because you're pointing this out, right, that these
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: are kind of short rulings that don't give you very
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: much guidance on what would be allowed, what wouldn't be allowed, right,
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: which would be particularly helpful to the administration, to Congress.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: What is the shadow docket and why do such important
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: decisions now seem to emanate from it?
• 51:55
  Speaker 6: So my apologies to your listeners.
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: I kind of just threw that out there as though
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: we were all operating in the shadows and we all
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: knew what we were talking about. But the shadow docket
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: is the docket of emergency appeals that come to the
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: court in an expedited basis. And because they are often
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: emergency appeals that have to be decided of the moment,
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: they don't have the same kind of full briefing, nor
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: do they have the oral arguments that we typically expect.
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: of the cases that come before the court on its
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: regular merits docket. And so as a consequence, the shadow
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: docket is supposed to be the sort of quick, dirty,
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: like we're looking at something really fast because something's about
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: to happen, but we're not really trying to make sort
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: of a broad jurisprudential impact on an area of law.
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: What's happened over the last five years, however, and this
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: was especially acute during the Trump administration, was that the
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: administration really pushed for a lot of rulings on the
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: shadow docket. And they were often really successful in getting
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: the court to see their way of things on those
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: shadow docket rulings. And sometimes those shadow docket decisions would
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: then trickle in to the court's merit docket. So you
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: would see the court citing in a merits case things
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: that they had done earlier.
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: On the shadow docket.
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: And so Over the last couple of years, a number
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: of scholars, including Steve Vladek at the University of Texas,
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: have really noted the way in which the shadow docket
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: has really moved out of the shadows and become a
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: really prime way for the administration to prosecute some of
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: its domestic agenda items and for the court to essentially
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: credit or bless them.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: So last week, The Supreme Court declined to block a
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: ruling out of Texas that means the Biden administration has
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: to uphold Trump's remain in Mexico policy. What did you
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: make of that decision? Was that part of the shadow docket?
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: Are we on the shadow docket when they're making this decision?
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: And were you surprised by it? It seems like we're
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: in this moment where there's this debate about what happens
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: when a federal district or judge makes a ruling that
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: affects the whole country.
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: It's a terrific question.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: So this was another one of those kinds of emergency appeals.
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: So a district court judge in Texas, Matthew Kaczmarek, he's
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: a Trump appointee, basically said that the Biden administration's decision
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: to fall back from the Remain in Mexico policy and
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: to rescind it was unlawful, and specifically that the administration
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: had not offered the kind of reasoned judgments for rescinding
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: the policy that were required under the Administrative Procedures Act,
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: which is a law that requires the administration or agencies
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: to actually say why they are doing certain things. And
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: many of your listeners may remember this particular law because
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: it came up a lot during the Trump administration because
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: the Trump administration was great at taking action, but not
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: necessarily in explaining it.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: And one of the most famous- And they were bumbling oaths.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: That's also part of it.
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: Well, your words, not mine.
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: I just, I state the facts and offer you some
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: of this analysis. But one of the things that I
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: think the court noticed in the DACA case, for example,
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: was that the administration had rescinded the DACA program, but
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: hadn't really provided good reasons. And so the court ultimately
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: said in University of California Regents versus Department of Homeland
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: Security that they couldn't do that. They couldn't just rescind
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: DACA without actually providing reasons. Using that same logic, this
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: judge in Texas said that the Biden administration had rescinded
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: this Trump administration policy, but hadn't provided enough reasons for
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: why it had done so.
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: And so it was unlawful.
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: But more than that, This judge then said what needed
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: to happen was that the Biden administration had to reinstate
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: the remain in Mexico policy and gave them about a
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: week to do it, which prompted this emergency appeal that
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: went up to the Supreme Court.
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: And the Supreme Court.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: Essentially allowed that judge's ruling to go into effect. And
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: to your point, what makes this so unusual is not
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: the fact that the court determined that the judge's ruling
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: that there weren't enough good reasons had been allowed to stand.
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: That seems pretty straightforward. What is more concerning is that
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: it allowed this district court judge to basically tell the
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: United States government that they had to now go to
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: Mexico hat in hand in the middle of a global
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: pandemic and negotiate this policy with a foreign government in
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: order to reinstate it, because that's exactly what's going to
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: have to happen. The policy was rescinded in order to
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: reinstate it. The United States is going to have to
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: do some kind of brokering with Mexico to allow these
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases are
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: heard in the United States. And that kind of impact
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: on the conduct of foreign policy is something that typically
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: members of the judiciary try to stay away from in
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: their rulings. But this is a decision that basically forces
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: the administration to actually shift their foreign policy responses to
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: do a particular thing.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it just seems like also the exact kind of
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: decision that should be before the Supreme Court. They're like,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: hold on a second. This federal judge should not be
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: dictating foreign policy day to day, requiring a sudden about
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: shift in the party administration without this being heard by
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: the nine justices of the Supreme Court. This seems like
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: the exact kind of situation in which a ruling would
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: be stayed until it has a chance to be adjudicated
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: before the actual Supreme Court.
• 57:20
  Speaker 6: That's exactly right.
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: And for those individuals who argued that this was really
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: no different from the DACA case where the court said
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: that the Trump administration had not followed the appropriate procedures
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: and had not provided sufficient reasons for its rescission decision,
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: it's really worth noting that that DACA case was a
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: case on the court's merits docket. So when the court
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: made that determination that reasons had not been given, they
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: actually did so with the benefit of full oral argument
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: and full briefing on all the parties. That was not
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: the case here because it was a case on the
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: shadow docket and an emergency appeal. So really different circumstances,
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: even though the court was relying on some of the
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: same kinds of logic that we saw in the DACA case.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: So in this context, we have Justice Stephen Breyer. He
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: has a new book, Bet how the court's not political.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Everybody chill out. It's fine. He gave an interview with
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: the New York Times in which he didn't want to
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: talk about his plans to retire. But he did say,
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: and I took this as heartening, that no one on
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court lives on Pluto and that he doesn't
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: want to die as a member of the Supreme Court.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: What was your reaction to Justice Breyer's interview?
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: So in the interview, Justice Breyer noted that he didn't
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: want the whole process of stepping down and having a
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: successor name to be one that was unduly mired in politics,
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: which is totally on brand for Justice Breyer, who has
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: said that he really loathes the politicization of the judiciary.
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: But was also what was really interesting was that he
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: kind of offered this five factor analysis that he wanted
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: to consider before stepping down when there are all these
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: things that a justice has to consider. And I thought
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: that was especially on brand because if you read Justice
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: Breyer's First Prudence, this is amazing. man who has never
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: seen a five-factor test that he didn't love. So of course,
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: he would apply this to his own retirement decision. But
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: I think what the interview suggests is that this is
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: someone who understands that he is in a particular position
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: that the political environment in which he and this particular
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: position exists is one that is subject to a very
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: shifting landscape. And as much as he would like to
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: avoid the politicization of the court, the horse may be
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: out of the barn on that point. And this is
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: going to be political regardless of whether he wants it
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: to be or not. And perhaps he is looking for
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: a way to do this on his own terms, but
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: also keenly aware that this may be out of his
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: grasp entirely.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: It's interesting. Whenever a Supreme Court justice resigns, it's a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: political debate. It takes place in the United States Senate.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: It is not a job for which the president nominates
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: a successor. If he's worried about this being mired in politics,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: isn't the surest way to create the biggest political fight
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: to wait until we may not have a democratic Senate? Like,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: isn't the, isn't the way to avoid his worst fears to, to, uh,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: to learn to golf now?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: So I think one way to sort of think about
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: this is, you know, for someone of justice Breyer's vintage,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: the Supreme court and vacancies on the court weren't always
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: so politically animated or wrapped in the kind of politics
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: that we expect and see today. You know, when, Justice
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: Stevens was appointed to the court. It was sort of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: very straightforward. No one really talked about it. It happened
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: incredibly quickly. For people, I think, of our generation, we
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: are used, I think, you know, we lived through Robert
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: Bork or we were just, you know, at least sentient
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: during Robert Bork. We've seen the politicization of the confirmation process. So,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: you know, part of this, I think, is kind of generational.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: He's perhaps wistful for an earlier time when it really
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: wasn't the case that a Supreme Court nomination could prompt
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: this kind of really excessive and fever-pitched battle on both
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: sides of the aisle about who the nominee was and
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: what the impact of that nomination would be for the court.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: Stephen Breyer gave this very fulsome, long speech about his
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: views a few months ago, and it was striking how
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: much of his analysis of the politicization of the courts
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: doesn't really address the politics that takes place outside of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: the court. He's very much focused on the ways judges
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: behave in their chambers, in their roles, on the bench,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: but seems very uncomfortable actually reckoning with what has happened.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: But it does seem in that interview that he is
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: at least conflicted about it. I think some people were
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: critical of that interview, but I came to the end
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: of it thinking, this is a guy that's not going
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: to wait. This is not a person that's not going
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: to He at least is seemingly not wanting to wait
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: until after Joe Biden is president.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: So I think one thing the interview suggests is that
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: this isn't someone who's sort of like trying to hold
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: on until some better moment. I mean, I think he
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: recognizes as much as anyone else that maybe this is
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: the best moment. If you really want to sort of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: ensure that the person who replaces you is someone who
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: has similar sensibilities.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: And he acknowledged that in the interview. But I also
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: think he's someone who doesn't like to be pushed into
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: a corner.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: And I'm not sure that us berating him about stepping
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: down is the way to actually get him.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: No, I won't stop.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: I won't stop. Retire, Stephen Breyer. Get out of there.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: I mean, the name makes it easy to make up
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: all of these rhymes.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: But, you know, again, he I think he wants to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: do this on his terms and his way in a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: way that sort of feels good to him.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 6: Like, you know, is that selfish? Is that realistic?
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah. I'll leave it to you all to decide, but
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: I got a sense from the interview that this wasn't
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: a case of someone who sort of, you know.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 6: Fame, I'm going to live forever.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: I think he understands, like he's 80 years old, but
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: I also think he's enjoying his job in a way
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: that he never really has before. This is someone who
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: more than any of his colleagues spent the most time
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: being the junior justice, getting the real dregs of opinions.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: And now he's had this term where he is the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: senior member of a three justice minority, but senior nonetheless.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: And he's getting all of these great opinions. The chief
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: justice is giving him all of this really meaty stuff.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Like the job satisfaction must be.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: Through the roof.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Well, look, I say this with all due respect and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: I don't want to, that's sick. Uh, but the, it's
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: to be, look, come on.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: You know, whether you agree or not, um, There is,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: I think, something, and I think Justice Ginsburg had a
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: little bit of this as well, waiting to get to
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: a place where you really were, you knew the job,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: you knew what your role was, you knew how to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: play it really well, and you didn't want to step
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: down at the height of your powers. I think for him,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: this really is the height of his time on the court.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: He is the leader of the liberal wing of the court.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: I mean, it is a very diminished liberal wing, and
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: that must be said, but he is the one in
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: the catbird seat in terms of that wing of the court.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 6: He's getting great assignments.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: He wrote the opinion in the ACA case and in
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: the student speech case.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: This is what he's been waiting for.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: And maybe this in part explains why he's reluctant to
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: give it up.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: Well, hopefully he'll also be excited about Tuscany. Melissa Murray,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: thank you so much. And before I let you go,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: I do want to say, as always, thank you so
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: much for your comments. If you were sentient during the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: Robert Bork confirmation, you should probably also start a skincare
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: line as soon as possible.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: Thank you for saying that. Today is my birthday.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: Happy birthday.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: I am. I'm so old today. But I don't know.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to do whatever Justice Alito does to his
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: skin because that is a man, too, who has.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: Not aged at all.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: That's called having no empathy. That's actually really good for
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: the skin.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: It's actually very good to feel nothing.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: I'm just trying collagen supplements.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: I'm just doing collagen supplements.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: Sociopathy and collagen are great for the skin. Melissa Murray,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: thank you so much.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: I said it.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: She didn't say it.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: I didn't say it.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Melissa Murray for joining us today. And we
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: will see you Thursday, September 9th. Everyone have a fantastic
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Labor Day weekend. And we'll talk to you then.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: And thanks to Justice Breyer and Senator Feinstein for retiring. Oh,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: thank you.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: That was so great. That was so great. What a
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: labor day it was. Labor of love. Pod Save America
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producer is
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Yale Freed, and Nar Melkonian, who film and share our
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: episodes as videos every week.